Things Your Flight Attendant is Wondering

Or you can add this subtitle: "Little Ways to Irritate a Flight Attendant"

Let me preface what promises to be a long post with this disclaimer: I am very tired at the moment. I got up at 3 am to be at the airport at 6 am for a shift on the couch, then got sent on a San Diego turn from the couch, back at 2:30 pm. All in all not a bad day, but I didn't get much sleep last night and it is now 8 pm. Anyway, I'm feeling it now and I really can't be held responsible for what might come out of my feeble brain and hands at the moment.

To continue, as I was waiting for the final descent bells on our last leg today, I decided to jot down a few of the things I've heard Flight Attendants wonder aloud about.

Although none of these things alone is earth-shatteringly horrible, they are all curiously common on-a-plane societal behaviors, and that makes them quirky to me and the sociologist in me can't help but wonder....

Why do many passengers/folks/people:

• feel compelled to hand us trash when we have the beverage cart and ask for a beverage when we have a trash bag in our hands?

• speak for their spouse. Inevitably, and inexplicably, it's always the spouse you weren't asking, "Can I offer you a beverage?" that will say, "She/he will have a ________." Are these spouses not allowed to speak for themselves, and is there some unwritten law that the spokespouse is not allowed to be the one the flight attendant was addressing?

• let their small children bounce on the seats and roam up and down the aisles, then get upset when their child doesn't want to buckle back up?

• viciously elbow their sleeping travel companion, jolting them rudely awake, just to see if they would enjoy something to drink? (Um....no, I wouldn't. I was SLEEPING!)

• find it a difficult and exhausting task to completely tuck their used paper towels into the trash bin in the lavatory. Instead, they leave their used towel trapped half in/half out of the flap. I mean, really. Does it take that much more effort to make sure it's all the way in and the flap has swung shut?

• just HAVE to use the bathroom after the final descent notice - at a time when the seatbelt sign has already been illuminated for at least five minutes and the announcement has been made requesting folks to stay in their seats. They could have gone anytime during their 2 hour flight, or at least just after the captain made the "last chance" announcement, but instead a surprisingly number of folks have dire emergencies after it is no longer safe to be up and about the cabin.

• who are diabetic don't always carry snacks or juice with them when they travel - just for unforeseen delays and emergencies. Come on, did you suddenly become diabetic when you entered the jetway? (I know this sounds particularly harsh, but I've dealt with diabetics all my life and I know how especially important it is for diabetics to plan ahead and it's kind of scary how many "diabetics" we encounter that don't plan for contingencies.)

I could go on and on. No, really. I could go on and on! I have at least five more ponderings on my list, but I believe I'll save those for another day.

One positive note to end on: Calilfornia passengers are notorious among the airline industry for being somewhat, um, challenging to deal with, as many of them seem to present themselves as entitled. Well, let the record show that my San Diego turn today was by far one of the best turns I've ever done, and the SAN to DEN flight was the best California leg EVER. I didn't have to serve a single "and a" today! ("And a" folks are people who ask for a _______ and a _______.) Way to go, San Diego!

Off to bed now. Crew Scheduling is sure to call me at 4 am if I don't go to sleep soon.